Kettle Hero
Overview
Kettle Hero is a project me and some friends created during our GAM200 and GAM250 Module. A 2D action and adventure game, the player takes on the role of Kettle Knight, a hero who lives in a magical world inhabited by food based life forms. The game features a unique mechanic where Kettle Knight uses his powerful vacuum gun to absorb enemies. Once enemies are absorbed, the player can break down these enemies and turn them into essence which he can use to unlock new abilities.
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The game was eventually made in a custom engine but prior to that, I worked on developing a prototype of the game using Unity. Aside from that, I was also the lead designer as well as the secondary artist. Kettle Hero is a project that I am especially proud off as it was my first time leading a team.
Responsibilities
Game Design
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Conceptualized the main idea of game
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Lead the team in the design
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Coded the gameplay prototype in Unity
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Coded Dialogue system
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Designed the levels
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Coordinated between Design and programming teams
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Created UI for the main menu and Blender
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Art Design
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Created all enemy sprites
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Created some environmental assets
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Animated enemy sprites
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Created ending cutscene
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Edited gameplay trailer
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Ideation
For the ideation phase, the team went through many different suggestions. Originally, the game was supposed to be a sci-fi shooter with a mechanic on procedurally generated weapons. However, the idea was too ambitious for a student project. Then, I took inspiration from Kirby and suggested on an idea where the player could gain the traits of the enemies in which they absorbed.
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Due to our art strength not being strong, we had to rely on wacky mechanics and funny scenarios to strengthen our game. We decided to go with a food theme as we knew that it would be hilarious to go after a horde of vegetables that could explode.
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We also decided to make our game use a hub-and spoke system. The hub would be the castle where the player could return to blend enemies and gain new powers, with the spokes being the levels in which the player travel to destroy mini-bosses and absorb more ingredients to create their powers.
Coding
As the one responsible for coding the main controls of the game, I had to go through many iterations when designing the game. The Unity engine was used because I had worked on it for many other projects and was familiar with it.
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One of the first things I did was set up the player controller. I used a standard top down control scheme as it could be easily tweaked to fit a side-scroller with a few changes to the sprite. I then had to tweak the values of the mouse input so that they would become smoother to control for the player.
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Next up was finding a reverse to the typical shooting mechanic. As our game used a weapon that absorbs its enemies, I needed to create a code that reversed the transform position but constantly updated the player's aim to check if there was a viable target in front of it. I also had to create an inventory checker whenever the player absorbed an enemy. The game would take the value and store it so that when the player reaches the blender section, the amount of enemies he absorbed would be reflected in the available materials to blend.
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I also had to create a dialogue system. It could be easily configured to fit with any character within the game. The values were simple to edit so that anyone within the team could use it.
Enemy Design
Due to the team lacking artist, the designers had to step up into the art role and I was put in charge of designing the enemies for the game. We decided to use Ray-men as our inspiration for the body plan of the characters in our game world. The disjointed limbs would make it easier for us to animate as we did not need to account for the position of the joints.
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I went for a two-tone shade on the enemies. The enemies were based off food and had to be cute but also slightly creepy. This was done by giving them wrinkles and eyebags as well as making their animations eerie.
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Each enemy also had to have its own unique ability. Tomatoes could detonate themselves. Mushrooms could bury out of the ground and chilis could fire balls of flame to damage the player. I had to the enemies walk cycle, their attack, their special ability as well as their death frame.
